“Why don’t we drive up and talk to her as soon as we’re through here?”
Toni nodded again. “Good.”
I smiled at her. “We’ll find Kelli,” I said, trying hard to be reassuring.
She smiled back. “I know.”
I nodded, and then I turned to the others. “Alright guys, seems as though Kelli’s just changed our agenda for us.”
“Quite a trump card,” Richard said.
“You got that right,” I said, leaning back in my chair. “So, let’s think. Kelli’s searching for Isabel. We’re searching for Isabel. And now, we’re searching for Kelli.”
“What’s Kelli’s likely strategy?” Richard asked. “If we can figure out how she intends to go about looking for Isabel, maybe we can put ourselves on her path and find her that way.”
“It would be better to find her before she gets there,” I said.
“I agree,” Richard said. “The two of them together-that might complicate things.”
“Sounds like she might try going undercover,” Doc said. “If that’s what she heard you guys talking about.”
Confident as I was that we could find her, the notion of Kelli going undercover was still pretty frightening. That meant that she could soon be rubbing shoulders with some pretty nasty folks-people like Donnie Martin and Crystal Wallace. I didn’t know Kelli that well, but she
“That’s exactly what she’ll try and do,” Toni said suddenly.
I looked at her. “How? How will she go about it? How will she go under? She doesn’t have any of our information-names, addresses, cars-that kind of stuff.”
Toni shrugged. “She doesn’t need it,” she said. “That’s not the way she’d go about it, anyway. She doesn’t have a clue about investigative work.”
“Then what?”
“She’s just going to follow Isabel’s tracks.”
I thought for a second. “You mean the mall?”
Toni nodded. “Exactly. She’s going fishing, and she’s making herself the bait.”
The Jeep’s tires thumped as we crossed the expansion joints on the I-5 bridge over Lake Union. Toni and I were headed northbound, on our way up to Lynnwood to talk to her mom. From there, we were going to start our search for Kelli at the Alderwood Mall.
“Do you think we should just go straight to the mall?” Toni asked.
I changed lanes to avoid a slow-moving delivery truck. “Your choice,” I said. “But remember, we don’t even have a decent picture of Kelli with us. That picture of her with Isabel is probably not good enough. We wouldn’t have anything to show around.”
“That’s right,” Toni said, nodding slowly. “We need to go to mom’s first. I can use her PC to print off a couple of photos to take with us.”
“Remember to send one to Kenny, too,” I said.
She nodded. “Right.”
Before we left, I thought about a strategy and decided that it would probably be best to just keep working on the Isabel-hunt plans we’d mapped out before Kelli went missing. In other words, I had Kenny download the photos of the inside of the boys’ house off my phone and put them with the photos of the big house. While we were gone, he’d enhance and study them, looking for any kind of clues that might show up.
I called Nancy as we drove and let her know what was happening.
“The Lynnwood PD might be willing to take a missing person report-but then again, maybe not,” Nancy said. “Kelli’s an adult. She’s free to come and go as she chooses, you know.”
“Understood.”
“Without any indication that she’s in imminent danger-especially since she left a note saying she was leaving of her own free will-the police might not even take a report at all.”
“I know,” I said.
“One thing I can do,” she added, “I know a couple of detectives up there. If you’d like, I can put in a call-ask them to take special care of this.”
“That would be fantastic,” I said. “We’d definitely appreciate it.”
“I’d really like to be able to do something more about Kelli, but you know I can’t, right?”
“I know,” I said. “I didn’t expect anything. Just putting in a good word for us would be fantastic. Mostly, though, I just wanted to keep you posted on the status of our investigation. This definitely adds a new dimension.”
“It sure does,” Nancy said. “Do you have a picture?”
“We’re on our way to get one now.”
“Good. Send me a copy when you get it. We can at least keep our eyes open.”
“Thanks, Nancy.”
I hung up and drove for a few minutes, going over the possibilities. Then I turned to Toni. She was staring straight ahead, completely lost in thought.
“Let me ask you a question,” I said.
She turned to me. “Go ahead.”
“You’re thinking Kelli’s going to try to get herself picked up by Crystal and Donnie Martin, right?”
“Yep.”
“I don’t know Kelli all that well. How capable is she? How tough is she? Is she like a momma’s girl?”
She gave a quick laugh. “The opposite,” Toni said. “She has a nasty temper. She’s been in two or three fights at school-fistfights. She actually got suspended from school twice last year. The second time, Mom had to go talk the principal into letting her go back to school.”
I smiled. “Guess it runs in the family,” I said quietly.
“What’s that?” she said.
“No offense, but she sounds a little like you.”
“I figured you’d say that,” she said. She pushed her hair back off her face-a somewhat futile effort considering the wind whipping around inside the drafty Jeep. “But I suppose that’s right. We’re a lot alike.”
“She sounds like she can take care of herself, though,” I said. “That’s good.”
“Put it to you this way. There were several times when she was growing up that we-either me or Mom or sometimes both-had to go bail Kelli out of trouble. But never because anyone was picking on her, or taking advantage of her, or anything like that. I think everyone knew better than to do that.”
I smiled. “Like I said-sounds like someone else I know.” I reached over and took her hand.
Julia Blair is a very striking woman, make no mistake about it-classically beautiful in a foreign-movie-star kind of way. It’s impossible to miss the connection between her and Toni. Both are on the tall side; both have thick, dark hair; both are trim with amazing figures. Julia is forty-eight years old-manages a restaurant not far from the house. She has quite a story. She’d been a stay-at-home mom until her husband-Toni and Kelli’s father-died in an automobile accident in 1996. Julia hadn’t worked since Toni’d been born eleven years prior to that, but with the death of her husband, she had no choice. She got a job as a waitress in a nearby restaurant. The owners were impressed by her work ethic and the way she took care of her two girls at the same time. They’d been tolerant and flexible when it came to Julia’s schedule. Now, twelve years later, Julia’s in the process of buying out those same owners (who have retired and moved to Florida, leaving Julia as general manager of the place). The Blair women- Julia, Toni, and Kelli-none of them sit back and watch life go by. They jump right in.
“I’m confident that we’ll find her,” I said to Julia as we sat in her living room. Toni was in the study (used to be her old bedroom before she got her own apartment) printing off a couple of photos. “It’s what we do, and we’re good at it.”
Julia had a very concerned look in her eyes. She nodded. “Tell me truthfully,” she said, “are the people she’s trying to locate-are they dangerous people?”
I looked at her for a moment, and then I nodded. “They are,” I said. “I won’t lie to you. That’s the bad news.
